Before picking up the baton, he spoke to the audience about his tenure at Ravinia, reflecting on memorable nights conducting “our deluxe orchestra.”

Conlon’s relationship with the CSO and this festival, he implied, shaped Thursday’s program. For Garrick Ohlsson was back to perform a Mozart Piano Concerto, in effect recalling Conlon’s earlier traversal of Mozart’s works for piano and orchestra (with Ohlsson as one of the guest soloists). And the two suites with which Conlon opened this evening, though surprisingly light as counterparts to the Mozart, each cast a spotlight on individuals in the ensemble. Or, as Conlon put it, in these compositions by Igor Stravinsky and Richard Strauss, “virtually everyone is a soloist.”

Not quite, but certainly listeners had the opportunity to savor the work of several CSO instrumentalists, a welcome pleasure.

The Suite from “Pulcinella” offers the opportunity to perceive Stravinsky, a titan of 20th century modernism, in a rather different light. For unlike the lush orchestration of his “Firebird” Suite and the asymmetric rhythmic eruptions of his “Rite of Spring,” Stravinsky’s “Pulcinella” looks back at his baroque-era predecessors via scaled-down orchestral forces. In building the suite on music of Pergolesi and others, Stravinsky essentially preserves the character of age-old music while refreshing it with touches of piquant, 20th century dissonance.

Jim Young/for the Chicago Tribune

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park. (Jim Young/for the Chicago Tribune)

The result is an immensely appealing series of musical vignettes loosely based on the commedia dell’arte character Pulcinella and the romantic pranks and shenanigans that swirl around him. Even apart from these plots and subplots, however, Stravinsky’s score captivates attention through his brittle instrumental writing and animated baroque forms.

Conlon conducted this music with a light hand, opening with an unhurried, regal approach to the most famous movement of “Pulcinella,” the Sinfonia (Overture). From there, true to his word, Conlon cleared ample space for CSO musicians to sound forth. Assistant principal oboist Michael Henoch produced characteristically sublime phrase-making in the Serenata (and elsewhere); principal flutist Stefan Ragnar Hoskuldsson crafted long streams of lucid tone in the Gavotta con due variazioni.

All the more in Strauss’ Suite from “Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme,” inspired by Moliere’s play. Though Conlon’s decision to feature a second suite of miniatures did not provide a fitting or significant counterbalance to the first, it certainly once again afforded him the chance to turn the spotlight to individual players. Concertmaster Robert Chen unspooled silken legato lines in “Lully’s Minuet,” and principal cellist John Sharp offered a radiant, amber tone in the culminating “The Dinner.”

In all, a selfless contribution from Conlon in tipping his hat to his longtime colleagues.

The program took on a deeper, weightier tone when Ohlsson played one of the darkest of Mozart’s piano concertos, No. 20 in D Minor (K. 466). If the first half of the concert showed composers looking backward in cultural history, the second half featured a soloist addressing Mozart from the opposite perspective, looking forward to the piano concertos of Beethoven.

For Ohlsson, always a commanding presence at the keyboard, offered a full-bodied sound, sharply articulated rhythmic figures and a generous use of the sustaining pedal. Too generous, in fact, in the cadenza to the first movement, Ohlsson producing blurred effects that were inappropriate for this music. And though he never conjured the high polish one associates with Mitsuko Uchida’s Mozart or the melting lyricism of Murray Perahia’s, Ohlsson’s heroic, muscular, utterly extroverted approach had its moments.